Hack

All information webs are created and maintained by Ralph C. Losey, attorney at law, in cyberspace since shortly after it opened in the 80s and physically located near the Space Port in Florida. See legal disclaimer. If you think about the biggest problems, the ones with potential for the biggest impact, you conclude that AI-Ethics is right up there. In fact, some of the greatest geniuses of our day consider the promise and danger of super-intelligent AI to be the most important issue of our day.

To learn more visit AI-Ethics.com and see the video at the bottom of the page.

Hacker Way

Everyone should know about hacks and hackers and the philosophy they developed, the Hacker Way. The terms hack and hackers originated in the late 1950s at MIT as part of the Tech Model Railroad Club. They called a hack any ‘project undertaken or product built not solely for some constructive goal, but with some wild pleasure taken in mere involvement.” Steven Levy, Hackers (O’Reilly 2010) at pg.10. (Levy’s excellent book contains a very detailed history of hackers up until 1983.) Now MIT defines a Hacker as “someone who applies ingenuity to create a clever result, called a “hack”.” They go on to explain:

The essence of a “hack” is that it is done quickly, and is usually inelegant. It accomplishes the desired goal without changing the design of the system it is embedded in. Despite often being at odds with the design of the larger system, a hack is generally quite clever and effective.

The Hacker Way philosophy that developed over the years was based on tech thoughts like these. Be Fast is still one of the fundamental Hacker Way precepts. (So too is the fundamental precept of Hands On, but more on that later.) Fast is the credo behind Facebook and most other advanced software companies. Yet, surprisingly, very few people are talking about the Hacker Way or sharing the secret sauce, the hack, behind their success. That is contrary to another fundamental hacker principle of Openness. So, I am stepping in to fill the gap. That’s what I do, my hack. (Stepping-In is discussed in Davenport and Kirby, Only Humans Need Apply,and by Dean Gonsowski, A Clear View or a Short Distance? AI and the Legal Industry, and A Changing World: Ralph Losey on “Stepping In” for e-Discovery. Also see: Losey, Lawyers’ Job Security in a Near Future World of AI,Part Two.) The Hacker Way is a path to maximum impact with your life, a path to build social values near and dear to your heart.

Facebook’ corp headquarters photo with symbols added.

In this eleven minute video that soon follows I discuss the five principles and related ideas of the Hacker Way. I explain how these ideas can be applied to life in general, not just how they can be applied in my legal specialties, as my prior videos on the subject have done. See: the TAR Course; and HackerLaw.org for legal applications. Please leave some comments, either here or at my new Facebook site: HackerWay.org.

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If you have not already read Mark Zuckerberg’s original words on the Hacker Way, I suggest you do so now. They are contained in his initial public offering Letter to Investors. Also see my related ideas on history and social progress at Info→Knowledge→Wisdom.

Diving Deeper Into The Hacker Way

We can now dive deeper into all nine concepts of the philosophy as explained by Mark Zuckerberg in his initial Letter to Investors. The nine are shown in the figure right, which is a stylized enneagon or nonagram, also known as a Star of Goliath. The five primary ideas are shown one the top: Focus on Impact, Be Fast, Be Bold, Be Open and Develop Social Values. The bottom four are secondary, but important. You will find these four posted everywhere at Facebook headquarters: Code Winds Arguments, Hands On, Constant Improvements and Meritocratic. See: Mark Zuckerberg’s original treatise on the Hacker Way, contained in his initial Facebook public offering Letter to Investors.

Of these the most important from a philosophical point of view, the one that underlies the entire credo, is Hands On. The Hacker Way is a pragmatic type of philosophy based on action and evaluation of results. Just do it. Do not over-think it. You will learn by your actions. Nothing is perfect the first time out, but you keep on improving it. The process continues indefinitely.

Here is one of Mark Zuckerberg’s best known lines on the Hacker Way, a philosophy followed by Facebook, and many, if not most, other high-tech companies:

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.

Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once.

Here is my latest video commenting on the nine fundamental ideas of the Hacker Way as set out by Zuckerberg.

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The Hacker Way has always guided my career as a lawyer. It lead to my limiting my practice to e-discovery in 2006 and my focus on AI-Ethics in 2017. See the new web page with address AI-Ethics.com. Below is the video where I talk about the impact of Hacker Way on my legal practice.

About the Blogger

Ralph Losey is a practicing attorney and shareholder in a national law firm with 50+ offices and over 800 lawyers where he is in charge of Electronic Discovery. All opinions expressed here are his own, and not those of his firm or clients. No legal advice is provided on this web and should not be construed as such.

Ralph has long been a leader of the world's tech lawyers. He has presented at hundreds of legal conferences and CLEs around the world. Ralph has written over two million words on e-discovery and tech-law subjects, including seven books. He is also the founder of Electronic Discovery Best Practices, and e-Discovery Team Training, an online education program that arose out of his five years as an adjunct professor teaching e-Discovery and Evidence at the UF School of Law. Ralph is also publisher and principle author of this blog and many other instructional websites.

Ralph is a specialist who has limited his legal practice to electronic discovery and tech law since 2006. He has a special interest in software and the search and review of electronic evidence using artificial intelligence, and also in general AI Ethics. issues. Ralph was the only private lawyer to participate in the 2015 and 2016 TREC Recall Track of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and prior to that competed successfully in the EDI Oracle research.

Ralph has been involved with computers, software, legal hacking and the law since 1980. Ralph has the highest peer AV rating as a lawyer and was selected as a Best Lawyer in America in four categories: Commercial Litigation; E-Discovery and Information Management Law; Information Technology Law; and, Employment Law - Management. Ralph also received the "Most Trusted Legal Advisor" industry award for 2016-17 by the Masters Conference. His full biography may be found at RalphLosey.com.

Ralph is the proud father of two children, Eva Losey Grossman, and Adam Losey, a lawyer with cyber expertise (married to another cyber expert lawyer, Catherine Losey), and best of all, husband since 1973 to Molly Friedman Losey, a mental health counselor in Winter Park.

Sedona Principles 3rd Ed

1. Electronically stored information is generally subject to the same preservation and discovery requirements as other relevant information.

2. When balancing the cost, burden, and need for electronically stored information, courts and parties should apply the proportionality standard embodied in Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C) and its state equivalents, which require consideration of importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.

3. As soon as practicable, parties should confer and seek to reach agreement regarding the preservation and production of electronically stored information.

4. Discovery requests for electronically stored information should be as specific as possible; responses and objections to discovery should disclose the scope and limits of the production.

5. The obligation to preserve electronically stored information requires reasonable and good faith efforts to retain information that is expected to be relevant to claims or defenses in reasonably anticipated or pending litigation. However, it is unreasonable to expect parties to take every conceivable step or disproportionate steps to preserve each instance of relevant electronically stored information.

6. Responding parties are best situated to evaluate the procedures, methodologies, and technologies appropriate for preserving and producing their own electronically stored information.

7. The requesting party has the burden on a motion to compel to show that the responding party’s steps to preserve and produce relevant electronically stored information were inadequate.

8. The primary source of electronically stored information to be preserved and produced should be those readily accessible in the ordinary course. Only when electronically stored information is not available through such primary sources should parties move down a continuum of less accessible sources until the information requested to be preserved or produced is no longer proportional.

9. Absent a showing of special need and relevance, a responding party should not be required to preserve, review, or produce deleted, shadowed, fragmented, or residual electronically stored information.

10. Parties should take reasonable steps to safeguard electronically stored information, the disclosure or dissemination of which is subject to privileges, work product protections, privacy obligations, or other legally enforceable restrictions.

11. A responding party may satisfy its good faith obligation to preserve and produce relevant electronically stored information by using technology and processes, such as data sampling, searching, or the use of selection criteria.

12. The production of electronically stored information should be made in the form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a that is reasonably usable given the nature of the electronically stored information and the proportional needs of the case.

13. The costs of preserving and producing relevant and proportionate electronically stored information ordinarily should be borne by the responding party.

14. The breach of a duty to preserve electronically stored information may be addressed by remedial measures, sanctions, or both: remedial measures are appropriate to cure prejudice; sanctions are appropriate only if a party acted with intent to deprive another party of the use of relevant electronically stored information.